How much are you in debt?

[debter08]

Thanks everyone, I don't feel so bad now. It is nice to know that we are not the only ones. I always hear in the news and in articles that the average person carries like 15K in debt. We are wayyyyy over that. I know I should of said what your income was too not just how much debt.

[catleg]

Y'all need to try harder. With my wife I'm well over $400k, all credit cards.

[rockyroad]

We are about 300K with most of it being buisness credit card debt

[StartingOver08]

Y'all need to try harder. With my wife I'm well over $400k, all credit cards.

HA! See I thought you needed to try harder...if you totaled the #'s on my post it was over $1M.

[catleg]

HA! See I thought you needed to try harder...if you totaled the #'s on my post it was over $1M.

One million has a very nice ring to it. I just thought we were talking about unsecured since that's the "money shot" so to speak.

[ccmisery]

I'm approx $40K in debt all unsecured credit card, I'm still paying the minimums or over minimum and realize I will never see the light at the end of tunnel, especially after receiving notices that my APR will be climbing to insane levels even though I always paid my bills on time.

I wish I would have cancelled all but one of my cards 3 years ago when I about the 1/3 or less of the debt I have now. I listened to Suze Orman who said "don't close your credit card accounts" and got back in trouble in no time.

[relief13035]

A whooping $252k = 2 rental homes and about $60k in cc

[CatsInTrouble]

100 k in unsecured/cc debt.

[TJR70]

Well I don't have even 7k in debt and our combined income is only 42k. But I am being sued for over 5k of it and a garnishment will hurt even more.

[debtmonster]

I was in the hospital last year and got almost $40,000 in medical bills from a 3-day hospital visit. From that point I put everything I could into a spreadsheet and I was up about $360,000 between my house that I owe about $130k on, a car I owe about $13k, another I owe $37k, plus lots of deficiency balances on repo's from the past, credit cards up the wazoo....

So secured debt:
House $130k
Car1 $37k
Car2 $13k
$180,000 for secured debt

$180,000 for unsecured debt.

I now make about $40-50k. My income is variable. This month my gross check before taxes and business expenses was $3100.

I may make $2900-3500 next month. How is my debt-to-income ratio for this?

In December I made almost $8000 because of a Christmas bonus, so that throws off my whole 6-month means test, plus we had day jobs. Now I have only the home business income of that $3000.

Do you guys think I will qualify for a Ch. 7 living in Florida?

[debter08]

I'm approx $40K in debt all unsecured credit card, I'm still paying the minimums or over minimum and realize I will never see the light at the end of tunnel, especially after receiving notices that my APR will be climbing to insane levels even though I always paid my bills on time.

I wish I would have cancelled all but one of my cards 3 years ago when I about the 1/3 or less of the debt I have now. I listened to Suze Orman who said "don't close your credit card accounts" and got back in trouble in no time.

Sounds like the same situation we are in. We are current and pay a little over the mins too. I feel like our money is being flushed down the toilet. We have to be current though. We live with our parents and they will not appreciate the collection calls. We mentioned the b word to them before and they freaked out saying we need to honor our debts, blah, blah, blah. Believe me we would love to honor our debts and not be in this situation but we have no money. We are even charging baby formula and diapers right now. We don't qualify for any kind of assistance through WIC because we make too much and our kid needs to eat. If we didn't live here we would have stopped paying a long time ago. One of the reasons we want to file is so we can move out. I am trying to think of something creative so the phone calls could be diverted somewhere else though. BTW, I love Suze too, and have read alot of her books. I have even written to her to be on her show for advice but she never contacted me. She does have good advice, and we try to follow it but we are just in too deep to be able to. Her motto "people first, then money, then things" does help us diffuse alot of fights over our finances though.

[BigJohn]

I remember one day sitting in a chair in a dark room, sleeping, in our store (I was on Oxycodein as a result of having MRSA), when a banker arrived at the store wanting to talk to me. From that meeting, she applied for a loan for the store. When I went to the bank to get the money (30K), she asked if I wanted another loan for 12K. I said YES. When she got done with that loan she asked if I wanted another loan for 6K. I said YES. Oxyodein is a narcotic and people that take a lot of that drug might be considered druggies (not me because I had presriptions), but after taking that drug for a few years, why would a bank still give me these loans? This was one of many loans I got without having to do anything. Unbelievable.

[deadbroke99]

I remember one day sitting in a chair in a dark room, sleeping, in our store (I was on Oxycodein as a result of having MRSA), when a banker arrived at the store wanting to talk to me. From that meeting, she applied for a loan for the store. When I went to the bank to get the money (30K), she asked if I wanted another loan for 12K. I said YES. When she got done with that loan she asked if I wanted another loan for 6K. I said YES. Oxyodein is a narcotic and people that take a lot of that drug might be considered druggies (not me because I had presriptions), but after taking that drug for a few years, why would a bank still give me these loans? This was one of many loans I got without having to do anything. Unbelievable.

Hey Big John, My 9 year old daughter had MRSA last year. That is some scary stuff!

[laurannm]

When we filed last year (above-median) we were at $140k of unsecured debt, and successfully discharged it all.

[ccmisery]

Sounds like the same situation we are in. We are current and pay a little over the mins too. I feel like our money is being flushed down the toilet. We have to be current though. We live with our parents and they will not appreciate the collection calls. We mentioned the b word to them before and they freaked out saying we need to honor our debts, blah, blah, blah. Believe me we would love to honor our debts and not be in this situation but we have no money. We are even charging baby formula and diapers right now. We don't qualify for any kind of assistance through WIC because we make too much and our kid needs to eat. If we didn't live here we would have stopped paying a long time ago. One of the reasons we want to file is so we can move out. I am trying to think of something creative so the phone calls could be diverted somewhere else though. BTW, I love Suze too, and have read alot of her books. I have even written to her to be on her show for advice but she never contacted me. She does have good advice, and we try to follow it but we are just in too deep to be able to. Her motto "people first, then money, then things" does help us diffuse alot of fights over our finances though.

I too would like to pay back all of my debt in the normal matter, but with the recent rate hikes from 3% or 10% to 25% for no reason, I will never pay off this debt. I have had debt before that I paid off with 0% 90 days or 1 year, secured debt.

Why the goverment justifies and allows these banks to get billions from taxpayers then turn around an look the other way when they charge 25% or more interest is beyond reason. You can't even earn that much money on a CD if you had extra cash laying around.

Suze Orman has some good advice but much of what she say's is often not realistic, no everyone has 9 months of $ stashed to live off of if you lose our job and etc., she once said to keep your cards and put them away if they are paid off for security when you need the $ well now times have changed, if you don't use your card(s) the banks are closing accounts and/or hurting your FICO because of this.

I will never have the amount of credit cards I have now in the future, I pay cash for everything and believe if I can't pay cash for it then I can't afford it. Of course there are somethings you need credit for then again that's becoming harder to get.